Monogatari Series - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.27

027

Yo, Araragi.

I’ve been waiting for you.

I can always count on you to keep me waiting, though, can’t I?

Does this qualify as “it’s been a while,” I wonder? After all, this me and the me you know are completely different people, as are you and the Araragi I know. Or maybe more strangers than different people. Though of course you’re still you, and I’m still me.

I thought it best to entrust this letter to Hachikuji. I’m praying it reaches you─if you haven’t given up on meeting people, even with the world in this state, then I’m pretty sure it will reach you in the end.

Because it’s the threads binding people together that weave the tapestry of fate.

But you know how easy it is for me to get carried away, and if I keep getting mired in idle chatter, I’m going to run out of stationery before I know it─paper has become a precious commodity these days.

I’ll try to be brief.

So briefly hear me out.

To be honest, I don’t know for certain what you’ve been doing, what path you’ve followed or where it’s led you, nor what you might be thinking─you always talked about what a perceptive guy I am, but even I don’t know everything. I was just showing off for you youngsters, and the fact is that the world is positively littered with things I don’t understand.

A different fate, for instance? I’ve got nothing.

A different world? No idea.

Though maybe it would be better to call it a different route.

For the gamer generation, the gamer mind.

So I want to let you know at the outset that the information I’m about to dispense will likely include any number of mistakes, and plenty of errors. Please amend those yourself.

You can do that much, can’t you?

Because─you’re the Koyomi Araragi who succeeded.

The Araragi from my route, by which I mean this route, sadly failed─failed to establish a constructive relationship with Shinobu and threw his life away in vain.

Not a bad end, a dead end.

That in and of itself is a tragedy.

I feel terrible about my friend dying right under my nose. Which is not to say that the Araragi of this route held back at all.

Don’t be disappointed in him.

He gave it everything he had.

He risked everything, time and time again.

Same as you.

Of course, I’m writing based on the premise that there is a you, an Araragi, for me to write to─to be frank, this is something of a gamble.

I’m betting on the possibility of an Araragi who forged a positive relationship with Shinobu, and my gambler’s heart is thumping in my chest.

Not that I’m much of a gambler.

Might be your retort when you read this?

But it’s not a hopeless wager.

In fact I think it’s a sure bet, the odds are maybe 8-2 in favor. Good enough to wager everything I’ve got, and my life to boot. Because I refuse to believe that there isn’t at least one route where you succeeded.

I want you to take a look at Hachikuji, who I assume is standing before you now─it seems that a mysterious high school student saved her life when she was a little girl.

She says that on a certain Mother’s Day, while en route to visit the home of her mother, from whom Hachikuji had been separated for life by family circumstances (though maybe that’s an exaggeration)─she was crossing against the light and was shoved out of the way to safety just as she was about to be hit by a truck.

As I understand it, the incident occurred while she was running away from some sort of deviant who had flipped her skirt and was pursuing her─but the fact that afterwards that high school student helped the lost child to find her mother’s house seems to have made the deeper impression.

She seems terribly regretful that, because she was shy around strangers at the time, she didn’t utter a word of thanks to the high school student.

Though maybe that was only natural.

Given that the high school student seemed a bit funny in the head, talking to his shadow and all.

I had already heard this story before Golden Week, when all that stuff was happening with Missy Class President (I expect all that stuff happened in your route as well). At the time, I was going around town collecting tales of aberrations.

That’s when I became acquainted with Hachikuji.

And it wasn’t just her. All kinds of people remembered that high school student.

Hachikuji said that he was alone when they met─but according to most accounts, he seemed to have formed a two-man cell with a blond girl (sometimes a little girl, sometimes a middle school girl who seemed like she’d returned from living abroad).

Really, all kinds of people.

Remembered that mysterious high school student.

An office worker who had been a middle school girl at the time, a recently retired (on account of marriage) policewoman who had been stationed in a police box at the time, not to mention the truck driver who claims he was the one who almost hit the kid.

And even those who didn’t have such direct contact with him could hardly forget the sight of a high school student walking around carrying a little blond girl in his arms like a koala.

Sounds like the town was in a tiny bit of an uproar at the time.

And why not?

How else could it be?

He was too mysterious, his identity just too secret.

There were even tales of him hiding behind utility poles, staking out the homes of ordinary citizens─though these were nothing but unfounded rumors, of course.

Urban legends.

Chinese whispers.

Campfire tales.

And then it hit me.

Spring break was over, so by then I already knew both Koyomi Araragi and the little girl that Shinobu Oshino had become─not that Shinobu ever set foot outside the abandoned building in which I made my happy little home.

Nor was she embedded in your shadow.

And yet.

It goes without saying that it was the two of you.

You two, for your part, probably think you pulled it off without a hitch. But just like in sci-fi novels, however hard you might try not to affect anyone, or history, or fate, it’s impossible not to leave some kind of trace in people’s memories.

The effect people can have on history─even just one person, or one thing─is terrifyingly profound.

Granted, we may not remember someone we simply pass by on the street.

We may not even be aware of them as part of the scenery, as anything more than a breeze.

Like how we forget some of our elementary school classmates when we enter middle school─and forget some of our middle school classmates when we enter high school─but even if we can’t recall the fact that we were in the same room as them, that memory nonetheless remains buried in our hearts.

Even if it doesn’t remain in the mind, it remains in the heart.

And that has to influence our lives.

History. The world.

Your traces did remain in this world.

Scattered though they were.

And I managed to reassemble them.

As ghost stories.

As aberration lore.

Naturally I don’t know all the specifics, but I’ll bet that that Araragi─not the Araragi from this route, the one I know, but you, the Araragi who is reading this letter─performed a time slip to save Hachikuji, yes? You used Shinobu’s power to leap into the past to save Hachikuji? In your route, Hachikuji must have died in that traffic accident, and it was only after her death that you got to know her, so you took pity on her, and yes, you tried to change the past.

You don’t have to hide it.

You don’t have to be ashamed.

I don’t even blame you for the time travel itself.

In fact, I’ve never had the slightest urge to blame you.

If you think that you brought the world to ruin by saving Hachikuji, you’ve got another think coming.

You’re wildly off base on that one.

It may well have been an important factor, but underlying causes only go so far. Because the Araragi, or me, or the Hanekawa of this route should have been able to find a way around it.

Not that your effect on history wasn’t colossal.

But we, who after all wield the same colossal power to influence events, should have been able to do something about your colossal influence.

And while I did tell Shinobu that it was best not to attempt time travel, I never expected every single route’s Shinobu to abide by that.

Especially.

A Shinobu who had a positive relationship with you─

I was pretty sure that if something went down, you’d avail yourselves of that option.

Though I doubt you would possibly use it for so cockamamie a reason as not having finished your summer homework, like you were Nobita or something.

How you holding up?

Still with me?

If you’re tired of reading, how about I throw in a classic Oshino joke right about here?

Okaaay, then let’s continue on.

Your life-or-death endeavor paid off, and as you can see, Hachikuji is still alive─the thing I want you to realize, however, is that this Hachikuji is not the same Hachikuji you know.

I’m not talking about the difference between being alive and being dead.

She’s the Hachikuji from another route.

My own inimitable analysis of the urban legends you two have become leads me to believe that you’ve got some misguided notions regarding traveling in time.

I did try to explain it properly to Shinobu, but it seems that she wasn’t really listening.

In your route either.

What can you do?

She probably turned a deaf ear to what I had to say in every single route, at least on this subject.

What I want to emphasize first, at the very outset, in a big ol’ voice, is the clear-cut truth that it is absolutely impossible to alter fate through time travel.

Fate can be altered.

It can be altered by a person’s thinking.

But it cannot be altered by time travel.

Because time travel to the past, or at least the type of time travel to the past Shinobu carried out, is not travel within the space-time continuum─it‘s nothing more or less than travel to another continuum altogether.

It’s not movement from the future to the past, but movement from one world to another.

Movement from one route to another.

I know I risk making this even more confusing by saying this, but for you two, this timeline, this ruined Earth, is a parallel world.

A different world.

So rest easy, my successful Araragi.

And my successful Shinobu.

Your world is plugging along just fine, totally unruined.

You think a world in which you succeeded could go down the tubes? Ridiculous.

There is a world still waiting there for you, Araragi, in which the worst thing you have to worry about is exam prep.

Thank goodness, right?

But I’m betting you won’t get it if all I tell you is the upshot, Araragi, so let me explain the whole thing from the beginning.

It’s really not that complicated.

First, I want you to imagine infinite worlds.

Vast quantities of worlds, lined up side by side.

Parallel worlds.

Parallel routes.

I think it’ll help if you picture the roads around Nagoya.

We’ll call the world where you and Shinobu have forged a positive relationship Route A, and we’ll call this ruined world Route B─no, if we do that you’ll start to think that the number of worlds is finite, so how about we insert a bit of distance and call this world Route X.

You warped with the intention of leaping back into the past─eleven years into the past, of Route A. Eleven years is nothing more than a guess, but the you who appears in the urban legends seems to have been wearing your school uniform, so I assume you warped while you were still in high school.

If you got held back, that’s a different story, of course.

But where you ended up wasn’t eleven years into the past of Route A, it was eleven years into the past of Route X. And, to put it plainly, when you crossed routes, the concept of time lost all meaning.

Time has no meaning across continua.

Imagine it like crossing diagonally at a pedestrian scramble─but then, once you had achieved your goal, your movement was vertical, leaving the past of Route X and arriving eleven years later in the same route─in other words, in this present.

When traveling to the future, it’s possible to stay within a given route─maybe you’ve heard about this from Shinobu? That traveling to the past consumes more energy than traveling to the future, or is harder, or whatever…

Now, as to why you two ended up in Route X in the first place─why you chose this “ruined world” route out of all the limitless possibilities: it’s probably because, out of all the limitless worlds, this world is just about the only “Mayoi Hachikuji Survives” world.

I can imagine where Shinobu might have created the time tunnel─probably at Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. Bingo, eh? That shrine where you exposed Sengoku to all the world in her school swimsuit.

I assume Shinobu used the torii there.

Because if she didn’t use the energy there, there’s no way little-girl Shinobu could effect a cross-dimensional jump.

In my route, I rigged up something there to absorb the spiritual energy so it couldn’t be used for such purposes, but the me in the route where you and Shinobu have a positive relationship probably wouldn’t have been so cautious.

Thinking about it from a more holistic perspective, however, I was probably leaving you, leaving both of you, room to choose whether or not you would exploit the spiritual energy of that place, as part of my ideology of balance.

And when you passed through the torii, you were probably only half listening to what Shinobu was telling you, am I right?

So you let some extraneous thoughts slip in.

For example─

Couldn’t there be a world where fate allowed Hachikuji to live? That kind of thing.

If you, linked as you are to Shinobu, thought something like that, that thought would become your navigation system, and suddenly the reason you ended up in this Route X becomes all too clear.

Because while Shinobu works the pedals─you’ve got your hands on the wheel.

How’s my reasoning?

Am I on the money?

Or could I be off base?

Well, if I am, then I’ll leave it to you to make that part make sense.

Conversely, it wouldn’t be untrue to say that it’s precisely because you wished for Hachikuji’s survival that this route exists per se─because if you hadn’t rescued her after time warping eleven years into this past, she would have died then.

That’s one case where even I wouldn’t say that she just went and got saved on her own.

Your actions didn’t destroy the world.

To be precise, your actions alone didn’t destroy the world.

But saving Hachikuji is a triumph all your own─you should be proud.

Hahaha, this is a funny feeling… Knowing you’re the Araragi from another route, somehow I don’t mind praising you straight out. And not just because you’re the Araragi who succeeded.

Which is why, Araragi.

If you’re reading this letter─crap, when I say it like that, I’m probably already dead, but things being what they are, who knows? I might still be alive, though that doesn’t matter─Shinobu’s notion that travel to the past and travel to the future are the same, or similar, means that you guys mistakenly ended up here in this Route X.

And if I’m not mistaken, it also means that you guys will read this letter.

Because in setting the coordinates, and turning the steering wheel, I expect you wished to see “a world where Hachikuji and I never met.”

Add onto that Shinobu’s misapprehensions, and there’s an extremely high probability that you’re here, reading my letter.

I have the utmost confidence.

That this gamble has paid off.

So I’ve got a favor to ask of you, Araragi─and of you, Shinobu.

Would you mind saving the world?

I imagine you’ve already figured out that Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade brought this world to ruin, but do you realize that she is still alive, menacing what little remains of the human race?

Her suicide attempt failed.

She’s alive.

Haha, did you think she killed herself, that she’s already dead? Not that that isn’t a perfectly reasonable assumption.

But she failed.

And it wasn’t only her suicide attempt that was a failure─her attempt at creating thralls failed, too. It must have been her plan to bring the world to ruin by turning every single human being into a vampire, but you can’t go about creating thralls that crudely.

Often when you try to turn someone into a vampire, it doesn’t take, and they go into a frenzy.

Even for her─even for her, at the apex of her powers, some things are doable and some things aren’t. I mean, up to this point she had only ever made two thralls including you in her entire life, so her ideal vision of vampires breeding like rabbits, of producing vast quantities of thralls lickety-split, was never going to work out in the first place.

Thralls are offshoots of the vampire who creates them, which is exactly why, for the same reason that cells degrade when the cloning process is repeated─her plan was bound to fail.

Producing failed vampires.

Those being the zombies that you’ve probably already seen. Pretty startling, no?

I’m guessing you may be laboring under the misapprehension that Shinobu succeeded at committing suicide, which is why her thralls went off the rails. But they’re not successful products, they’re failed ones.

They didn’t go off the rails in the end, they were off the rails from the get-go.

That’s the only reason─there are any survivors left at all.

Humanity wouldn’t have stood a chance against vampires.

But because it was zombies, we’ve barely managed to hang on─for now.

Incidentally, Heartunderblade has been in hiding since her failed suicide attempt, and I’m on the hunt for her as we speak.

It goes without saying that she─the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire, she who is known as the aberration slayer, the mightiest vampire─is unstoppable, even on the brink of death.

There are no chinks in her armor to exploit like there were during spring break.

There is very little left that I can do. I intend to form a tag-team with our mutual friend the violent onmyoji, or maybe with the swindler, to launch one final suicide attack, but it will likely come to nothing.

The entire human race, zombified though they may be, are nonetheless not complete thralls of Heartunderblade. They are incomplete thralls, so to speak.

You could call these failed vampires “near vampires.”

For which reason─they can be restored.

Their humanity can be restored.

If, in the course of events, my team succeeds in defeating her─then the entire zombified human race, everyone who has been transformed into an aberration, will have their humanity restored, and this dead world can be revived.

Think I can call that hope?

It’s certainly wildly optimistic.

Because when Heartunderblade gets serious.

When Heartunderblade goes crazy.

No one can stop her─no one but you two.

No one but you, because you are her.

But you’re probably thinking, “There’s no way we can stop a full-strength vampire when our own vampiric nature is so weak.”

If so, that’s fine.

I can’t force you.

Because it’s not your world that’s ending.

But Araragi.

Take a look at the woman who delivered this letter to you.

That’s the Hachikuji you rescued.

And she too will eventually be hunted down and killed by those zombies if the world goes on like this─because while she’s clever, and strong, I’ve only instructed her in the bare essentials necessary for her to survive long enough to find you. She’s just a normal human being, after all.

Won’t it leave a bitter taste in your mouth, Araragi, to abandon a life you already saved once?

Asking you to save the world is just my own selfish request, so feel free to ignore it.

But Araragi.

At least save the girl standing there in front of you.

Your dear friend,

Mèmè Oshino

p.s.: By the by, in a startling turn of events, the Araragi here in Route X started dating Senjogahara, but who are you sweethearts with in your own world, I wonder?